Short Story - The Birds

Short Story - The Birds

In : The Birds: and Other Stories

By: Daphne du Maurier

Rating: 9/10

Year: 1952 (original); 2013 (kindle edition)

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

ISBN: 978-0-316-25360-4 (kindle)

Pages : 43 (from 12 to 54 ; out of 293p total)

Language : English 

From The Birds: and Other Stories which is a kindle edition I borrowed from an e-library, I read this first short story, The Birds, as part of March bookclub challenge in reading stories that had been adapted onto the screen. 

I'd seen Hitchcock's 1963 adaptation, a movie that was hyped for decades, but, upon watching, I'd felt over-hyped. Since I loved Du Maurier's Rebecca, I decided it was time to read this other original story, and I recall quite a few differences with the movie. For example, where, in the movie, we have a strange romance for people who just met, the short story has an established family. 

It starts thus On December the third the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Nat Hocken, who's on disability from the war (wwII, evidently, since this story was published in 1952), he works part-time, doing light jobs at a farm, owned by Harry & the unnamed missus Trigg. 

That day, Nat notices larger than usual flocks, of all kinds of birds being restless ; imagining, at first, that it must be due to they missed their migration period, end of autumn and proper arrival of winter make them so uneasy.

He calls this sudden and radical change the coming of a black winter, as opposed to a white, snowy one. Soon, however, these restless birds start attacking him, and his family, right at home, through the night... their life turning into a nightmare, where more and more birds, of all kinds, even small ones that should be really passive, attack with more vigor. 

This is indeed a horrific story and in a way uneasy to read, because of the sheer gore effect caused by this weird war between birds and mankind ; did they all become mad ? and why ? Why did they repeatedly attack ?  "The birds kept coming at him from the air, silent save for the beating wings. The terrible, fluttering wings. He could feel the blood on his hands, his wrists, his neck. Each stab of a swooping beak tore his flesh. If only he could keep them from his eyes. Nothing else mattered." 

What caused it ? theories arise, even some marked by the cold war - I'll let you read and discover, ponder once the open-ended conclusion in this suspenseful story, where the Hocken family learns that these attacks occur all over the country, including the bigger cities, including London. And soon, they get cut off the world, even the news bulletin on the wireless have gone silent... and the question is, can they survive the onslaught ? 

Daphne du Maurier's narrative style is delightful and creepy ; it keeps you on edge as you read, and doesn't take long from setting the story on a coast, the people we meet,  straight into action. 

Although she named Nat Hocken and his children, Jill and Johnny, the wife is just 'the wife' with no name, which I find odd - just like for his boss's name, we have the man (Harry) and then, missus Trigg. And, just like their lack of name, they also have little to do in a story where they are totally subservient and erased ; Mrs Trigg is as nonchalant and uncredulous like her husband ; Mrs Hocken is a mother and a woman who'll cry and ask her husband to stay with her at all costs, whilst Nat is the sole and practical person to try his best in protecting his family, despite the bitter cold and attacking crazy birds. On these aspects, I felt the story lacked better written women. I know this is 1952, but if Daphne wrote women better in Rebecca in 1938, I hoped at least a similar level, not this. 

I think that in addition to its horror aspect, the short story represents the trauma of the Second World War, with these birds which are in fact the numerous planes which bombed the cities, in an indiscriminate hatred, a madness of hatred sweeping over the the entire world, cutting people off from each other, families and cities from the rest of the nation.